LFN
a paje xef
Yahoo
grupo
LFN
LFN
wiki
Testos e plu - texts and more.
Presenta
LFN
Aprende LFN a esta ora - learn LFN now!
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Frequently Asked Questions
If this is Lingua Franca Nova, what was the original Lingua
Franca?
Lingua Franca was a pidgin or trade language that flourished in the
Mediterranean from perhaps as early as the 1300's until perhaps as late
as the 1800's. It was a blend of Italian, Provençal (or Occitan,
the language of southern France), and Catalan (the language of the east
coast of Spain). It had as well hints of Spanish, Portuguese,
Croatian, Greek, Turkish, and Arabic.
Its grammar was extremely reduced. There was no gender, no plural
suffix, no person suffixes for verbs, no possessive or separate
objective form for pronouns.... The only grammatical suffix that
survived was "-to" for the past tense! We can see similar
grammars in modern Pidgins and Creoles, such as Melanesian Pidgin
English and Haitian French Creole.
To learn more, go to Alan Corré's
page on Lingua Franca.
What is the relation between LFN and the original Lingua
Franca?
Basically, it was a matter of inspiration. I started the process
of creating Lingua Franca Nova in 1965. At that time, I had no
access to information about Lingua Franca other than a few lines of
Moliere. The original Lingua Franca was more analytic (i.e. like other
Creoles and Pidgins, or like Chinese) than LFN, but only
slightly. It was designed for quick and easy communications among
sailors and merchants, not for the broader purpose of providing an
international communications tool for the twenty-first century!
Because I selected a similar set of languages, and because I was also
interested in developing a simple and consistent grammar, LFN and
Lingua Franca often do overlap, especially in vocabulary. But
that was not intentional.
What is so special about Creoles?
A Creole is a grass-roots language: It is a language descended from a
Pidgin that has become the native language of a group of people. Study
of Creole languages around the world has shown that they display
remarkable similarities in grammar, possibly reflecting the universals
in all languages. Most words in Creoles, for example, are unvarying,
and the grammar tends to be indicated by simple particles and word
order. It should be understood that Creole languages are not baby-talk
versions of major languages. Kreyòl in Haiti, Papiamento in Aruba, or
Tok Pisin in Papua-New Guinea are full-fledged languages, capable of
expressing anything that can be expressed in French, Spanish, or
English.
What languages did you use to create LFN?
LFN is based on French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan.
Other Romance languages were considered but omitted for various
reasons, most often limited speaking populations and, in the case of
Romanian, the strong influence of non-Romance neighbors. Catalan
was included because of its centrality, both physically and
linguistically, which made it a useful "tie-breaker" when word forms
were split (as they often were) between a French-Italian version and a
Spanish-Portuguese version.
Why not English or Latin or Greek?
I honestly did not feel they were necessary: Most of the
international vocabulary of English comes from French or Latin, and the
vocabulary of the Romance languages is itself derived from Latin.
Latin and Greek have, of course, supplied us with innumerable
scientific words. LFN uses the Romance derivations of Latin
words, plus phonetic versions of Greek technical terms and affixes,
very much the way that Italian or Spanish do.
Isn't your language just a slightly modified form of some of
the other "international languages" out there, like Esperanto or
Interlingua?
No, in fact. I did not use any other constructed language as a guide
for either the grammar or the vocabulary. To the extent that many
of the other languages have a similar set of source languages and the
goal of simple and regular grammar, of course there will be
similarities.
But this was truly a separate undertaking -- a fresh start.
And what do you think makes your language any better than all
the others?
Please understand that I admire all the attempts mentioned, and I hope
that we someday adopt one -- it almost doesn't matter which! Of
the languages mentioned, I believe mine is the strictest in regard to
phonetic spelling, which I believe in very strongly. It is also
far more regular than Interlingua, yet more "natural" than Esperanto.
Does being "natural" really mean anything?
Ultimately, no. Someday (perhaps), children will learn the
international language in grammar school alongside their own, and think
nothing of its naturalness or lack thereof. But along the way, it
makes considerable difference: Many millions of adults will need
and want to learn the language, and will resist what seems artificial
to them. By basing LFN on the Romance languages, I am appealing
to a very large number of people who either speak those languages or
are familiar with them -- including most Europeans, North and South
Americans, Australians, and many people in Africa and Asia.
But why not include, say, Chinese or Japanese or Hindi or Arab
words and grammatical points?
Because by adding words and other things from many other unrelated
languages, I add little to LFN's learnability for the people of China,
etc., while reducing greatly the learnability for those familiar with
the Romance languages.
I should make a little political point: It is the European Union
that is most likely to seek and adopt a constructed language, and it is
the European Union that has the economic and cultural power to make it
attractive enough for others all over the world to learn!
Doesn't English already serve as a de facto lingua franca?
To a considerable extent, yes.
But English has a couple of problems standing in its way: First,
it has one of the worst spelling systems of any language using a
western alphabet. Unless it were to dramatically alter its
spelling system -- not a likely event -- it will continue to mystify
those who learn it as a second language, not to mention its own native
speakers!
Second, English has come to represent a specific cultural
tradition. Although there are many differences among Brits,
Yanks, Canadians, Australians, South Africans, New Zealanders, etc.,
they do share quite a bit of culture, including industrial society,
commercialism, free-market orientation, individualism, media dominance,
and unfortunate colonial histories. While not all these things
are necessarily bad (and are in fact emulated), they are not appealing
to everyone, especially countries who feel their cultural traditions
slipping away under the bombardment of English language movies, radio,
television, music, products, and now the internet.
How did you go about selecting specific versions of a word to
include in your vocabulary?
When looking at a set of words with a common Latin root, I usually went
with a conservative version -- i.e. one that retained as much of the
Latin root as my phonetic principles allowed. This meant that,
for example, consonants followed by l (as retained by French and
Catalan) were more likely than the various simplifications found in
Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. Likewise, simple vowels were
more likely than the various on-glides (uo, ia, etc.).
On the other hand, phonetics decreed that, although some initial
consonant clusters were retained for international recognition value,
syllables could only end in a vowel, an unvoiced fricative (f, s, x), a
nasal (m, n), or in l or r. This made for more final consonants
and complex medial clusters than Italian permits, but fewer than
French, Portuguese, or Spanish permit. While LFN may remind most
of Spanish generally, it sometimes takes on an Italian flavor by
avoiding medial clusters like ct or pt, or by not permiting final c, p,
or t. It reminds me of Catalan, which also sounds like a cross
between Spanish and Italian -- with a little French and Portuguese
thrown in!
What about the masculine and feminine versions of various
words?
There is, of course, no gender in LFN, so one issue was whether to take
masculine or feminine forms of adjectives and other modifiers. In
general, I have used feminine adjective forms, except where the word
can end in a consonant. A is the most central of the LFN
vowels (there being no schwa -- the uh sound in so many English
words), so it seemed appropriate for the unstressed endings of
adjectives, as well as the definite article, etc. The final
vowels of verbs were simply the most common third person singulars of
the present tense: a, e, or i.
Was this then a purely "scientific" process?
Part of the selection process was the consideration that short words
are to be preferred over long ones, easy to pronounce words over
difficult ones, internationally recognizable words over idiosyncratic
ones. Avoiding homonyms was also a consideration. Upon
occasion, simple esthetics made the choice between one form and
another. I cannot pretend that this was anything other than an
individual's creation. I consider it a minor work of art.
But, unlike the Mona Lisa, it doesn't matter if others change it or add
to it to fit their needs. Consider it an on-going creation!
What's with the noun forms taken unmodified from the adjective
or verb?
Taking nouns from adjectives unchanged is common: bela
(beautiful) becomes la belas (the beauties) in many languages. In
English, the adjective used this way as a noun often takes the abstract
sense -- as in good and the Good. In LFN, the Good would be la
bonia, using the -ia that makes abstract nouns of all adjectives and
nouns.
Taking nouns from verbs unchanged is also quite common: dansa (to
dance) becomes la dansas (the dances). But beyond a limited set
of these examples, there are many more that involve suffixes such as
-ion and -tion (and others!) in most Romance languages, as well as in
English.
To keep things simple, I used the "dansa" formula for all nouns derived
from verbs to refer to a concretized sense of the verb (a specific act,
the immediate results of the act, or the process of an act). In
English, this is often conveyed by using -ing ("the dancing was
wonderful"). In LFN, the corresponding suffix, -nte, is only used
to make verbs into adjectives (and nouns, as in the previous
paragraph!).
Why does LFN have only one third person singular pronoun?
Gender bias is a real problem in this world, and I believe that
avoiding gender pronouns may just help a little. This way, when
one talks about what "people" do, we don't subtly tell girls and women
that "people" doesn't include them.
The only difficulty I can foresee is when a complex situation arises
and we are discussing a girl and a boy and several things
besides. First, we can refer to the girl as "la fia" and the boy
as "la fio" in place of using pronouns. And we can use "esta,"
"esa," and "acel"(this here, this/that, and that there) to refer to
various objects -- especially "esa," which I retained especially to use
as an alternative for it.
You have grammars and dictionaries -- anything else?
Admittedly, LFN does not yet have the popularity of an Esperanto or an
Interlingua, or even an Ido, a Novial, or a Glosa! But we are
beginning to get some notoriety, and we have translated a few texts,
such as the Hemingway story Hills like White Elephants, the
Buddhist scripture The Metta Sutta, a piece of the Gospel
according to John, and a few other tidbits. We are just beginning!
Why should I learn LFN, a language which nobody speaks?
Well, "nobody" is not quite true. We are trying to establish a comunity
of people speaking Lingua Franca Nova with our News-Group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LinguaFrancaNova/
Beyond that, you'll find no simpler entrance into to the world of
Latin-based languages. And beyond that, learning LFN is fun --
really! Try this: http://lfn.esef.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/PresentaLFN
Addendum
Dec. 2003, June 2004
When I first introduced LFN on the internet, it garnered considerable
attention. Bjorn Madsen developed a Yahoo group for it (which
still exists, though it is considerably quieter now!) and many people
had suggestions for improving LFN. Because of the many
suggestions, we started a second group (with the name Europijin) for
those interested in continued improvements in the direction of pidgins
and creoles.
Over time, Bjorn and I and others of the two groups agreed that a
number of these suggestions would indeed improve LFN, and we eventually
adopted them. Here are the most notable:
- The past tense went from the suffix -va to the particle ia;
- The future tense went from -ra to the particle va;
- The subject-object-possessive distinctions (e.g.
io/me/ma...) in the pronouns have disappeared.
Minor adjustments in the vocabulary were also made. On the other
hand, our attempts at doing without a plural suffix (using the articles
li and di instead) proved awkward, so the plural -s remains as the very
last vestige of grammatical affixation in LFN.
Our major accomplishment was the development of translations of the
Introduction for Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Dutch,
and Danish, and the 1700 word two-way dictionaries for each of those
languages. These were ultimately combined into one nine-language
dictionary. In the meantime, the reference dictionary
(LFN-English) was expanded to its present length. My thanks go to
everyone involved!
The latest effort comes from Stefan Fisahn, who has developed a "wiki"
for LFN users to contribute translations, original writings, etc.
He has also been a great help in further developing the LFN tutorial
"Presenta LFN!" Most recently, he has developed a prototype
searchable dictionary.
There is still much work to do. It would certainly be nice if we
could reignite interest in actual conversation (as well as translation)
in LFN itself on the Yahoo group. We are, of course, much fewer
in numbers than Esperanto and Interlingua, but we have made an impact
on the internet as the most creole-like "Euro-clone" around. We
look forward to doing much more!
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